Bicycle safety is a
complex subject and many findings contradict the "common sense"
of motor vehicle drivers. For that reason, in a separate letter I
have written in some detail to carefully explain sources of data and
reasons the data makes sense.

This page is an
executive summary of the conclusions. Please note that conclusions
are not controversial, are
well known and accepted by highway safety engineers, and are
encoded into national standards such as AASHTO guidelines and
the Uniform Vehicle Code. The conclusions are often surprising to
non-bicyclists (including myself when I first looked into
on-street bicycle safety facts), so please read with an open mind and
feel free to double-check the sources:

Bicycling is a
Safe Activity

Bicycling
on-street (whether measured per hour, per mile, or per
trip) is about as safe as driving.1,2,3,4

Bicycling on-street is safer than
common activities such as swimming, water skiing, on-road
motorcycling.5

Bicycling on-street is at least 12
times safer than playing soccer, 22 times safer than basketball, 38
times safer than football.6,7

Compared with motor vehicles,
bicycles are far less likely to kill or seriously injure others,3
and they don't pollute.So for the vehicle
operator, driving and bicycling share the same low accident risk.
But for bystanders, the bicycle is the far safer option.

Bicycling
On-Street (even on 35 MPH+ streets) is Safer than Cycling on
Off-Street Paths or Sidewalks

Bicycling on the street is 2-3
times safer than riding on multi-use paths10,12 (for
example, major roads with bicycle facilities are 3.4 times safer
than multi-use paths10).

Bicycling on the street is >20
times safer than riding on the sidewalk10 (for example,
cycling major roads with bicycle facilities is 40 times safer than
sidewalk cycling10).

Wardlaw argues, with some
convincing facts and statistics to back him up, that the greater the
number of bicycles on the road, the lower the rate of death from
bicycle-vehicle accidents. If the number of bicyclists doubles, the
number of accidents increases by only about 25%. The reasons are
that (1) motorists who see bicycles frequently keep a lookout for
bicycles and know how to drive safely in their presence and (2)
motorists who have recently been on bicycle themselves drive more
courteously and safely around bicyclists.

This is not to say that youth
soccer, basketball, or football are highly dangerous activities.
Rather, the point is that we usual consider these to be rather normal
and harmless activities, and bicycling is many times safer yet.

Only about 5% of motor vehicle-bicycle collisions are
"rear overtaking" accidents. By contrast, over 75% involve
vehicles approaching from the front or sides at intersections.

The typical urban multi-use path has numerous awkward,
low-visibility, poorly controlled intersections with streets. So
these facilities decrease the least common type of accident
(rear-overtaking) but vastly increase the more common type
(intersections). That is one reason (of many) that this type of path
is less safe than bicycling on-street.

For a bicycle riding on a sidewalk, every driveway
becomes a dangerous intersection with poor sight-lines.
Intersections with streets are awkward; a fast-moving cyclist can pop
out into the street from a place no motorist expects a fast-moving
vehicle to be. So it is no surprise that sidewalk riding is more
dangerous than street riding.

Keep in mind that we are talking about relative safety
and danger here. Neither off-street bicycle path riding nor sidewalk
riding can be considered a highly dangerous activity--both are
far safer than, say, motorcycle riding or flying general aviation,
and about as safe as scuba diving. Bicycling is a generally safe
activity and here we are splitting hairs about which type is a little
safer than the other.

But supporting off-street bicycle paths because they are
"safe"; while rejecting on-street bicycle facilities because
they are "unsafe" is not supported by the evidence.
On-street bicycling is safer than sidewalk or bicycle path riding,
and adding bicycle facilities to streets improves the safety yet
again.